Optimism
by Subtlynice
Summary: On the nineteenth of January, 2006, Angela notices something which gives her some hope. Angela’s point of view, during Chapter 6 Friends of New Moon. Fanfic of the week on the Twilighters Anonymous podcast.


A/N: To show my appreciation of Angela Weber- the best human out there -I present my latest story: Optimism. This was inspired by Edward's appreciation of Angela in Midnight Sun. It made me appreciate her too, and I wanted to do something for her.

Disclaimer: If it belonged to me, I wouldn't be posting fanfiction now, would I?

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Optimism

I was glum.

I was trying to smile. I really was doing my absolute best to appear attentive as Lauren chattered away to me, but it was no use. I was still worried. It was silly, I knew that, but still, Ben was sick and all alone… I wished I had the guts to ditch my last two periods of school so I could go to his house, to check on him. Lunch dragged on unnecessarily. I was too busy worrying to pay much attention to my food.

I heard a chair scrape across the floor and I tried not to pay too much attention to it. The sound grated in my ears, mocking me, reminding me that Ben wasn't here today, that he wouldn't pull up a chair to sit beside me.

Almost as if Lauren was in league with the mocking fear residing in the pit of my stomach, she changed the subject to ask the one question I was dreading having to answer.

"Where's Ben today?" She asked, not sounding as if she particularly cared.

"Ben's got the stomach flu," I said quietly, keeping my voice calm. No need to worry anyone else. "Hopefully it's just some twenty-four hour thing. He was really sick last night."

I kept my voice optimistic, and I was surprised at how much better I felt, just saying the words aloud in a vague, non-committal way. Hearing the mental shrug in my tone almost made me believe there really was nothing to worry about.

Almost. I still worried though. It was impossible not to worry when I thought about Ben sitting up in his room with only a sick bucket for company.

"What did you two do this weekend?" Jessica asked me. She didn't sound as if she cared much, either. I sighed. This, for the most part, was why I missed Ben. Just his company at the lunch table, his hand in my own as we sat eating in silence was enough to get me through Jessica and Lauren's mindless, uncaring chatter. Whenever he asked me questions about my day, he actually cared about my response. Still, I answered truthfully, not wanting to sound at all rude.

"We were going to have a picnic Saturday, actually, but…" I paused. Jessica hadn't really asked out of interest, and I didn't want to bring the bear into our conversation. To be completely truthful, the memory of it still scared me. It had hardly looked like a bear, really, but there was no other explanation. It was so _huge_. "We changed our minds." I finished hastily.

"That's too bad," Jess said blandly. I had a feeling she was about to start talking about her own weekend, and was about to sink back down into my pit of worry and dread, when Lauren, seemingly curious about my change of plans questioned me again.

"What happened?" She asked, in a tone that could be mistaken for sympathy. Not that I liked to think badly of Jess or Lauren, but I really did prefer Ben's company nowadays. There was just something much more genuine about his sympathy. I could imagine it now, imagine his lips forming the same question, only it would sound so much nicer. A few other people turned to look at me now, with interest in their expressions. I didn't like it much. I wished Ben was here to hold my hand and maybe take some of the attention away from me.

"Well," I said, hesitantly, "we drove up north, almost to the hot springs- there's a good spot just about a mile up the trail." I paused, remembering with a slight internal grin, some of our other trips to just that spot. Those had all turned out much better than our ruined Saturday trip.

"But, when we were halfway there…" I paused, still not wanting to reveal our silly moment of fright when facing an unknown danger. "We saw something." I confessed, aware of the sceptical eyes on my face. I felt a blush rising to my cheeks as Jessica turned her attention towards me with actual interest.

"Saw something? What?" Lauren asked, with real enthusiasm for my story. I cringed. I wasn't at all sure that, given a choice, _Lauren_ would be my first choice for a confidant.

"I don't know," I admitted. "We _think_ it was a bear. It was black, anyway, but it seemed… too big."

I felt silly voicing these thoughts aloud to someone other than Ben, and my fears of dismissal were confirmed when Lauren rolled her eyes, her voice taking on a derisive edge.

"Oh, not you, too!" She snorted. "Tyler tried to sell me that one last week."

"You're not going to see any bears that close to the resort." Jess agreed dismissively.

I blushed again and looked down, trying to block their cynical tones from my mind. I wasn't seeing things, and neither was Ben, and neither was Tyler. How could three eyewitnesses be written off so easily by both of them?

"Really, we did see it." I muttered under my breath, but Lauren merely snorted scornfully again.

"No, she's right. We had a hiker in just Saturday who saw the bear, too, Angela. He said it was huge and black and just outside of town, didn't he, Mike?"

I looked up in shock. It couldn't be… _no_.

But it was.

_Bella_. Not just Bella though. Not the walking corpse Isabella Marie Swan had been for the last few months. For the first time since… well, since the Cullens departure, Bella looked… _alive_.

And she was speaking up for me? Defending my claim with her own? For the first time all day, I forgot completely about my worries for Ben's health and let the optimism rush over me. It was a pleasant feeling.

Jess and Lauren had turned to stare at Bella now, instead of me, I noticed with relief. Actually, the whole table was staring at Bella, shock evident on all of their faces. I immediately felt terrible for her. There she was, trying to regain her life, start over, help me out, and she was getting everyone's attention. I knew Bella hated attention just as much as I did, and it must be especially hard for her now. I could only imagine what she'd been going through these last few months… and I'd tried, I really had. I doubted Bella even knew that though. She walked around in a daze, not seeming to notice the people around her.

Not now though. Now, there was life in her mortified eyes. Now, she looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a car, rather than a zombie doing her best to impersonate her former self. That pleased me.

"Mike? Remember the guy with the bear story?" She whispered, sounding unsure now, but still… her voice was no longer inflectionless. It held expression; embarrassment.

"S-sure," Mike stuttered, not quite seeming aware of what he was agreeing to. He shook his head and went on, getting over his surprise as he addressed the rest of us.

"Yeah, there was a guy who said he saw a huge black bear right at the trailhead- bigger than a grizzly."

Yes. Bigger than a grizzly. Much, much bigger than a grizzly. I shuddered again.

"Hmph." Lauren grumped, changing the subject with a ridiculously false smile plastered to her face. "Did you hear back from USC?" She asked Jessica with fake brightness in her tone.

I stared at Bella, trying to isolate the change. Her skin looked healthier, I decided. Her face was rosier than it's usual pale, as if she'd caught some rare sunlight. Her face was expressive, too. She'd always been so very expressive up until last September when… well, until he'd left. Her eyes held the biggest difference- they sparkled with a new brightness that I'd missed.

Bella looked at me and I smiled thankfully at her. She smiled back, a warm, friendly, but somewhat unsure smile.

"So, what did you do this weekend, Bella?" Mike asked her now, seemingly as eager as I was to find out what had managed to change Bella so drastically. He sounded unsure too though, as if he was expecting her to revert back into the shell she'd been living in for the last four months. To be honest, so was I.

All eyes- minus Lauren's –turned to Bella again, and I felt another stab of pity as I saw her struggling to cope with the newfound interest. She stayed strong though, and answered with the same expressive tone.

"Friday night, Jessica and I went to a movie in Port Angeles." She said, surprising me. I glanced at Jess to see her lips tighten in obvious annoyance. I turned back to Bella. "And then I spent Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday down at La Push."

I felt another strange wave of optimism when I saw that- for the first time in too many months- Bella's smile twitched in a very genuine way, and her eyes sparkled with new life when she spoke of her weekend. Had something happened to her at the weekend? Had she maybe met someone new in La Push? Someone who could possibly heal the wounds Edward's departure had caused? I hoped so. Whoever had given Bella her smile back, I wanted to present them with an award. Bella had a beautiful smile when it was genuine. And it must have taken something _extraordinary_ to bring her back to life. Heaven knows I'd tried, so many times over the last few months, to talk a response out of her. And now here she was, looking just the same as she had when she'd first moved to Forks. Shy, a little upset about something unfathomable, but coping.

I couldn't honestly say she looked as well as she had with Edward- she had practically been glowing in those short months –but she did look good. And that was saying something, considering how she'd looked on Friday, the last time I'd seen her.

"What movie did you see?" Mike asked, and I frowned slightly at his obvious enthusiasm. How many times did Bella have to turn him down before he'd get the message? I wondered. He makes no effort to help her through those horrid four months, but now she's better, he jumps at the chance to go out with her again. Honestly. Mike and Jessica were more well suited than I'd originally thought.

"_Dead End_- the one with the zombies." She clarified with a grin. I grinned too. Maybe Bella's condition was repairable after all. Maybe she'd really found someone to fix it.

"I heard that was scary. Did you think so?" Mike encouraged.

"Bella had to leave at the end, she was so freaked." Jessica slyly intruded, turning heads back to her. I was pleased to see that Bella nodded, not letting her part in the conversation die.

"It was pretty scary," she admitted.

"So what did you do on Sunday when you weren't at La Push?" Mike asked, still eager, and I watched Bella as she replied politely to all of his inane questions.

She still didn't look quite right, I noticed sadly. Her eyes, though bright, still held a sadness in their depths that I doubted would ever fade. Her skin, though flushed, was still tightly stretched over her cheeks. And every so often, I'd see her look down, or to the side, and a flicker of pain swept across her face as she answered another dull question.

No, she still wasn't quite right. But she _was_ okay. She would make it. I let out a breath and felt suddenly much lighter, like I'd been holding that breath in for much longer than I'd thought. Since September, when I first began to worry about my depressed, unresponsive friend.

I occasionally interrupted Mike's chatter and asked some questions of my own, pleased when Bella looked me in the eyes to reply, or smiled a smile of true friendship and apology. When she stood up to dump her tray, I followed quickly.

"Thanks." I said gratefully to her in a low voice when we were out of earshot.

"For what?" She sounded genuinely puzzled.

"Speaking up," I clarified. "Sticking up for me." _And getting yourself back together, smiling, spending the weekend at La Push…_

"No problem." She said, looking down in another slightly painful pause.

"Are you okay?" I asked her gently.

She smiled, seeming touched, and I smiled back, encouragingly.

"Not really," she admitted. "But I'm a little bit better."

"I'm glad." I told her truthfully. "I've missed you."

She smiled wider, and seemed about to reply, when we both heard Lauren's sarcastic drawl, plainly intended for us to overhear.

"Oh, _joy_. Bella's back."

I couldn't agree more. I thought to myself, unable to hold back a smile even as I shook my head sadly at their childishness.

"What's today's date?" Bella wondered aloud, and I wondered privately just how much she'd missed since September.

"It's January nineteenth." I told her.

"Hmm."

"What is it?" I asked.

"It was a year ago yesterday that I had my first day here," she revealed, and I was struck by the irony- she had been such a topic for discussion today at lunch. It was like last year all over again. Even the bitter thoughts of Lauren and Jessica hadn't changed.

"Nothing's changed much." I said quietly, thinking of the young, happy girl whose company I had missed so much. It seemed like she'd turned back into the shy, gloomy girl she'd been this time last year. Not quite happy, more… potentially happy. She had the potential to be happy, if she stayed with this La Push friend. For now though, she was _better_, at least. It wasn't a happy thought when I remembered how perfect things had been for her last summer.

Still, the optimistic side of me reared to life as I saw the ghost of an ironic smile touch her lips once more.

"I know. I was just thinking the same thing."

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A/N: Ahh, I love Angela. She's so _nice_. She's just a genuinely nice person, and you don't get many people like that around anymore.

**UPDATE:** This story was mentioned on the Twilighters Anonymous podcast for Fanfiction of the Week a few episodes ago, as one reviewer kindly pointed out. Just wanted to say thank you to whoever drew it to their attention! Plus, thanks for drawing the actual podcast to my attention, too, because after I listened to the episode my story was mentioned in, I grew hooked. :)


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